Laura Mae Martin, Google’s productivity adviser and the bestselling author of “Uptime,” answers people’s questions in her advice column about how they can get more done at work and in their everyday lives. She recently tackled how to beat procrastination and offered these three tips:

1. Align your mindset with your workload by assigning themes to certain days. For example, Make Tuesdays and Thursdays “Sales Call Days” when you’ll power through sales-related calls, meetings, and emails.
2. Act like your own assistant by setting the stage for “Future You.” If you’re making a presentation tomorrow, set the stage today. Open a set of new slides, then make just the title slide so you're ready to go.
3. Assign a time to your work, so it’s harder to postpone. Say you expect the work to take 20 minutes. Those free 30 minutes before your next meeting make the perfect time slot!

Check out all the topics in Laura’s monthly “Because you asked” series on the Workspace blog.